“We Have Buses Filled With Arabs”

Police have begun ordering Palestinian laborers with legal work permits off buses from the Tel Aviv area to the West Bank, following complaints from settlers that Palestinians pose a security risk by riding the same buses as them. The Transportation Ministry says it is considering adding bus lines between West Bank roadblocks and central Israel; these would be geared toward Palestinian laborers.

Notice that these are laborers, not terrorists. Notice that their only crime is to be Arab. And notice how segregation’s logic leads inevitably toward a version of Jim Crow or apartheid. On Open Zion, which is on a hot streak right now, Emily Hauser sighs:

It’s important to note that separate bus lines would in many ways simply represent the codification of an ad hoc system already in place. Haaretz reports that West Bankers are frequently ordered off of buses well ahead of their destinations, forced to walk several miles to the nearest official checkpoint and then, having already paid for the bus, pay for a taxi to get home. +972reported a case in August in which an Israeli bus driver travelling from Tel Aviv to Ariel, the West Bank’s largest settlement, refused to allow Palestinians to board, and “was then instructed by police that he had to by law, but ultimately kicked them off later on anyway.”

Remember that this entire system is effectively under-written by you, the American tax-payer. And the settlements keep growing, sustained by the American Jewish establishment and the Christianist faction in the GOP.